hasteroth wrote:Ultimate Marvel. It is glorious. I've been reading every Ultimate Marvel Comic. I can give you a link and a reading order so you don't have to buy them all and figure out the right order to read them in.

Or if you only want to read one of them, read Ultimate Spiderman. There's also Ultimate Comics Spiderman which picks up after the end of Ultimate Spiderman.

Ultimate X-Men is better IMO. They made Peter a huge bitch in Ultimate Spider-man but it's still worth a read.

I've been on a definite Green Lantern kick as of late. In addition to these, I received the next 3 books in the "Reading order" continuity that I found that lead up to the current GL run, so I read those almost immediately. Last night I started out with the Green Lantern book that Daniel gave me. It was a really great read considering that it actually shows/explains what happened to Hal Jordan to make him go psycho in the first place, plus it introduces Kyle Rayner as the newest 2814 Lantern. Very cool stuff.

Midnight Nation... Hoo boy... What a freaking trip. Pun intended. More than anything else I've read it felt like I complete journey. I don't want to give anything away about the plot, but suffice to say, it's easily one of the best books I've read. I couldn't help but compare it to Y the Last Man, and I get the feeling that this played a heavy influence on it in certain capacities (speaking of which, I also now own the first 4 volumes of the Deluxe Hardcovers). I can definitely see why this is Daniel's favorite book, and I plan to buy a copy for myself eventually and have other people read it.

It seems the most part of suggestions here concern superheroes comics.So I would like to suggest more about graphic novels if you don't mind.

I am not sure if this genre is as popular as in France or Italy. But I would like to present few of these titles. Graphic novel is called Bande Dessinée (BD) which litteraly means "Draw Strip".

As you know (or not), french-belgian comics are very famous in these countries but are very rare overseas. Few of them are translated in english.

First, there is a partnership between the french publisher Soleil (essentially a fantasy publisher) and Marvel for few years now.

So Marvel bought the copyright of few series :

- Universal War One by David Bajram : a space opera serie in six issues. It's about temporal travel. I highly recommand it. The story is quiet awesome.

- Sky Doll : an italian serie in 3 issues. Very beautiful drawings. Story is all right. SciFi story again. But not as awesome as UW1.

Marvel published few other titles of Soleil : Scourge of the Gods, Samurai, Ythaq.

Okay now the following titles can be bound in english BUT not sure if it's available on USA territory.- Wake (Sillage) by Jean-David Morvan and Philippe Buchet : a really popular SF serie in France. There was a controversy about the first issue : as you know american publisher are very careful about nudity. Navee is topless during all the first issue and the US publisher censored it with an ugly black mark on her tits T_T

US Censorship:

Spoiler :

Requiem, Vampire Knight by Pat Mills (who is know in US I think) and Oliver Ledroit (this guy is a great artist). An original fantastic story about vampire. Recommanded.

Spoiler :

To finish my selection, I will recommand a very good american graphic novel by Craig Thompson : Blankets which a very beautiful love and autobiographic story. Read it, it's an order ^^

Dude, thanks a bunch for the recommendations. Both UW1 and Sky Doll look really damn cool. I've also heard very good things about Blankets. I will definitely check them out. And yeah, I'm absolutely down with graphic novels or even longer form stand-alone monthly titles with no tie-ins or continuity issues that the mainstream capes/cowls series are dominated by. That being said, I am still very much into the whole capes/cowls thing. Just last night I finished reading the huge DC Universe changer Crisis on Infinite Earths. I'm sure anybody who's into DC books knows what this is. I also read a companion piece that came out right after it called History of the DC Universe. It definitely helped to give a lot of relevance to what I had just read. For as messy as the whole thing was, I've gotta say, I'm very glad I read it. I know people say to stay away from the big "event" titles but hey, sue me. I like em (don't actually sue me). It was pretty appropriate timing since I had also just read volume 1 of the Sinestro Corps War in the Green Lantern series, and it features the Anti-Monitor and a lot of other stuff that makes more sense after reading CoIE. Now I'm planning on going through and catching up on Infinite Crisis, and much to Daniel's dismay, I'll probably check out Final Crisis as well.

Along with all these DC comics, I also watched the 4 DC Animated Showcase shorts that came out in the past year. Basically they're 12-24 minute short animated films focusing on some of the lesser represented characters in the DC Animated Universe. There were shorts for Green Arrow, Jonah Hex, The Spectre, and a Superman/Shazam crossover. All 4 shorts were really damn cool for different reasons. The animation in the Superman/Shazam short was fuckin AWESOME.

Aside from all of the cape/cowl stuff, I had mentioned before that I got the first 4 hardcover editions of Y the Last Man. I am really itching to dive into them, but the crappy thing is that vol. 5 (the last one) won't be out until June. So I either have to just download scans or buy vol. 9 and 10 of the TPBs, which I would just end up replacing with the HC once it comes out :\ So.. eh.. I dunno..

Brad wrote:Just last night I finished reading the huge DC Universe changer Crisis on Infinite Earths. I'm sure anybody who's into DC books knows what this is. I also read a companion piece that came out right after it called History of the DC Universe. It definitely helped to give a lot of relevance to what I had just read. For as messy as the whole thing was, I've gotta say, I'm very glad I read it. I know people say to stay away from the big "event" titles but hey, sue me. I like em (don't actually sue me).

Brad wrote:It was pretty appropriate timing since I had also just read volume 1 of the Sinestro Corps War in the Green Lantern series, and it features the Anti-Monitor and a lot of other stuff that makes more sense after reading CoIE. Now I'm planning on going through and catching up on Infinite Crisis, and much to Daniel's dismay, I'll probably check out Final Crisis as well.

I read the Sinestro Corps War when it came out in monthlies, but I read somewhere that the ordering in one of the two trades MIGHT be incorrect so be wary of spoilers. I *think* the second volume comes with the extra one-shots (i.e. you only need to buy the two trades which is convenient), but I don't remember if the one shots make more sense after or before the actual core titles. Again, be careful.

Good news is, if you like GL so far, you are probably going to like all the GL trades going forward for at least another 2 or 3 years worth of material since that's about where I'm at (i.e. after the War of Light and Blackest Night). Hopefully you can see why it's one of the only titles I've been following consistently for the last 5 or 6 years. After giving it some thought, I think it's the only title that I was reading back in 2004 or 2005 that I still read.

As for Infinite/Final Crisis, I wouldn't say I'm dismayed by the former. Infinite Crisis was alright (read: Geoff Johns) and should make sense to you after reading Crisis of the Infinite Earths recently, but Final Crisis is....bleh. I've been reading the DCU longer than you and even I was confused and *extremely* disappointed. You will definitely need to read some background material on 52 and Countdown (104 issues!). Don't actually read the entire series (even I did not), but find some summary on them or just ask me since both basically have only two major plot reveals.

Lastly, not to spoil anything in Infinite Crisis, but chronology wise I think it comes before Sinestro Corps War. I could be wrong, but I think that's where the Anti Monitor makes his reappearance. Again, after reading Crisis, Infinite Crisis should be relatively easy to get into although technically speaking the big event prior to Infinite Crisis was Identity Crisis (which is also good).

So in short, Crisis of the Infinite Earths -> Identity Crisis -> Infinite Crisis -> 52 -> Countdown -> Final Crisis. Sprinkled with other "big events" that are self-contained in a particular series (i.e. Green Lantern: Rebirth, etc.).

Brad wrote:I'm sure anybody who's into DC books knows what this is. I also read a companion piece that came out right after it called History of the DC Universe.

Inculding all the tie-ins? I'm pretty sure it was a crisis tie-in issues that had a GL fighting someone with an invisible yellow forcefield. Which was pointed out in that really dramatic way comicbooks have. "Oh no! My ring can not affect him because of his INVISIBLE YELLOW FORCEFIELD!" Invisibility has colors. I laughed. A lot.

dwchang wrote:Lastly, not to spoil anything in Infinite Crisis, but chronology wise I think it comes before Sinestro Corps War. I could be wrong, but I think that's where the Anti Monitor makes his reappearance. Again, after reading Crisis, Infinite Crisis should be relatively easy to get into although technically speaking the big event prior to Infinite Crisis was Identity Crisis (which is also good).

So in short, Crisis of the Infinite Earths -> Identity Crisis -> Infinite Crisis -> 52 -> Countdown -> Final Crisis. Sprinkled with other "big events" that are self-contained in a particular series (i.e. Green Lantern: Rebirth, etc.).

Infinite Crisis does indeed happen before Sinestro Corps. In "Wanted: Hal Jordan" (..I think) there's actually a one-page chapter break where it states that in between these 2 issues, the events of Infinite Crisis occurred, and the story picks up one year later.

Brad wrote:Infinite Crisis does indeed happen before Sinestro Corps. In "Wanted: Hal Jordan" (..I think) there's actually a one-page chapter break where it states that in between these 2 issues, the events of Infinite Crisis occurred, and the story picks up one year later.

Yeah I think that's because 52 was the "missing year" in the DCU since it came out once a week for an entire year. Fortunately, it shouldn't detract from enjoying Sinestro Corps War (or the rest of GL). One thing I really enjoyed about Geoff Johns run is *for the most part* you could read GL by itself without having to read the other DCU titles if you didn't want to.